A. Technical Field
This application relates to network control management, and more particularly, to the use of virtual local area networks (“VLANs”) within a multi-chassis network element to manage traffic therein.
B. Background of the Invention
The importance of networking technology in today's society is well understood. Communication networks have become a significant medium on which companies and individuals communicate. The types of information that are communicated on networks include voice, video, and data. The reliability of these networks is very important in day-to-day operations of many companies and individuals.
Network providers demand that networking elements within their networks operate with an extremely low failure rate. A network failure event may lead to a large amount of data being lost and may significantly impact the companies that rely on the network. These network failures may also cause financial losses to the network providers and require significant efforts to repair.
Network providers generally require that networks, and elements therein, maintain a layer of redundancy. To that end, network elements or nodes, such as routers and switches, typically standby components that may be activated to compensate for a failed component. In the case of such a failure, traffic may be diverted from a failed component to a corresponding standby component to allow traffic to continue to flow within the element. This redundancy effectively reduces the amount of damage caused by a failure within a network element.
Another important factor in reducing network failures is providing appropriate traffic management on the network element. This traffic management includes the internal switching and processing of network traffic from multiple ports to particular applications within the element. This management may be complicated by having particular network streams having different quality of service designations which may effectively prioritize one stream over another. For example, data traffic fault indication may be switched at a faster rate internally within the network element to ensure that data plane protection is happening in a timely manner. Traffic management may also provide routing or switching protocols within the network element to efficiently route traffic between ports on the element.
Different types of traffic within a network element may interfere with each other because of the different routing protocols/commands and the timing of these commands relative to each other. For example, traffic interference may occur if two different circuit packs attempt to simultaneously communicate with other circuit packs or applications. Also, broadcast traffic coming from a communication network is typically transported to a management/control module in the network node but may inadvertently be switched to another component, such as a line card, because of interfering commands at the switch.
Accordingly, what is needed is control management infrastructure within the internal control plane that prevents interference between circuit packs and provides a level of internal redundancy for traffic within the network element.